If you want to know a little more about how this site is constructed, the tools that are in use etc then read on.
Website technologies
The website layout and components are all built using Astro which then builds a really clean, static version of the site. Astro looks after things like CSS bundling, image size permutations for responsive images and making all of the static HTML files. All of these are then deployed into an S3 bucket in AWS and served via cloudfront (which is done via a github action).
This results in content that is easily searchable via google and can be delivered to readers very quickly.
The site was moved from Gatsby and React to Astro because even though Gatsby produces static files, it still uses a lot of react behind the scenes as “improvement”. With modern browsers and lightweight HTML I decided I wanted to drop as much JS from the delivered page as possible and rely on the browser to do the work (which is considerably more performant).
Content authoring
Content is authored using Markdown as raw files which are then pulled into Gatsby’s data store to process into HTML.
Infrastructure management
Infrastructure is all managed via Terraform which sets up and keeps organised all of the various AWS services such as S3 buckets, Certificates and cloudfront distributions.
Images
Images are a mix of pictures I take myself where needed for a project, sourced from Creative Commons available images in Flickr which are then attributed. As of 2024, some images are now produced for headers using Stable Diffusion, which I do locally. I acknowledge that Generative image models have likely been trained on copyright artwork (including mine) I explicitly do not use prompts that mimic artists’ unique style (eg “in the style of… ” type prompts).
Astro has a good image processing system which can produce various sizes of image in order to make the site responsive and keep the page weight as light as possible. It also neatly crops images based on overflow of their containers so you end up with considerably smaller images as a result.
Use of AI
Various AI tools are used to help produce this site.
- As noted above, I use image generators to make content and hero images where required to illustrate a topic. This is in addition to images I may create directly myself.
- Coding assistants are used (primarily Github Copilot, Gemini, Codex) in a mix of quick auto-complete style use as well as sometimes when I’m doing a batch of work (especially refactors).
- My writing is authored by me directly, sometimes with an LLM used in “sparring mode” where I use it to test the logic of my contentions, provide alternative perspectives or provide feedback on the way I’ve framed things poorly. In short I use it the same as I do other humans who are gracious enough to read over things before hitting publish.
Update: 2026-01-20: Reflective of recent move to Astro from Gatsby and added the section on how AI is used to be explicit about this.